It’s Thursday, so this must be Chile. But after a fleeting glimpse of the mountains that surround the city of Santiago, I found myself back in familiar territory – a conference room. This one was large enough to hold the 1,500 people attending the annual ICARE conference. So my mind has been focused on marketing matters, not scenery. And the conference has forcefully reminded me that lesson No. 1 in marketing is to really understand the needs and desires of your customer.

Yesterday I was back in Mexico City (via Istanbul) to present at the ESOMAR Latin America 2008 Conference. Amidst all the discussion of regional issues, a completely different question popped into my mind. If research is important to creating a successful soap opera, then how much more important should research be when you are developing a TV commercial, in which you have not 30 minutes but 30 seconds to get your idea across?

Yesterday I spent an hour with Hayes Roth, CMO at Landor Associates, answering questions mailed in to the Financial Time’s "Ask the Expert" forum following the announcement of the 2008 BrandZ™ Top 100 Most Powerful Brands Ranking. There were some very interesting questions and I hope our answers did them justice. (Click here for the transcript.)

Perhaps what we should have done was to focus on the issue raised by Mark Ritson in Marketing magazine. After reviewing the fortunes of various brands in the Top 100, Ritson made the following comment:

The answer is that they all recorded substantial increases in brand value between 2007 and 2008 as measured by Millward Brown Optimor’s 2008 BrandZ Top 100 Most Powerful Brands Ranking.

Given that technology brands, including mobile providers, accounted for more than half the increase in the Top 100 valuation from 2007 to 2008 and have attracted a lot of the media’s attention, it is nice to see some "traditional" brands not only surviving but thriving. In fact, as we shall see, they share more in common than strong brand valuation.

London is as crowded and hectic as ever. The “Congestion Charge” levied on private vehicles driving in the city center reduced traffic when it was introduced a few years ago, but now the traffic nightmare has returned. Unlike the streets outside, however, the Marketing Week Branded Content Forum was not packed, which was a shame, because a lot of good content was shared there.